1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates generally to telematic devices, and more particularly to an abstract public user interface manager having prioritization capabilities.
2. Description of the Related Art
The electronic content and sophistication of automotive designs has grown markedly. Microprocessors are prevalent in a growing array of automotive entertainment, safety, and control functions. Consequently, this electronic content is playing an increasing role in the sales and revenues of the automakers. The features provided by the electronic content include audio systems, vehicle stability control, driver activated power train controls, adaptive cruise control, route mapping, collision warning systems, security systems, etc. The significant increase of the electronic content of land based vehicles has concomitantly occurred with the explosive growth of the Internet and the associated data driven applications supplied through mobile applications.
Telematics, a broad term that refers to vehicle-based wireless communication systems and information services, promises to combine vehicle safety, entertainment, and convenience features through wireless access to distributed networks, such as the Internet. Telematics offers the promise to move away from the hardware-centric model from audio and vehicle control systems that are built into devices that are custom designed for each vehicle, to infotainment delivered by plug-and-play hardware whose functionality can be upgraded through software loads or simple module replacement. Furthermore, new revenue streams will be opened up to automobile manufacturers and service providers through the products and services made available through telematics.
Since these infotainment systems integrate entertainment and information within a common envelope, the systems need to be highly integrated, open, and configurable. However, the electronic systems currently on the market are custom designed for the make, model, year and world region in which the vehicle is sold. Additionally, the electronic systems being used today are linked by proprietary busses having severely limited bandwidth that are inadequate for data-intensive services combining information entertainment and safety. The proprietary and customized systems require a developer to know the underlying software and hardware application program interfaces (APIs) in order to develop applications for future infotainment systems. However, numerous proprietary and customized systems are spread across the various makes and models of the vehicles in the marketplace. Thus, the heterogeneous nature of the various systems essentially eliminates any benefits of economies of scale since equipment and software must be tailored to each model permutation.
To interact with telematic systems, users generally can utilize various user interfaces, such as touch screens, control knobs, and voice commands. Unfortunately, the user interface systems can vary from system to system. As such, development of software to take advantage of the various user interfaces is difficult to develop, particularly when the exact nature of available user interface hardware is unknown at the time of development.
In view of the forgoing, there is a need for methods to abstract user interface management. The methods should allow development of telematic applications without a precise knowledge of available user interface hardware at the time of development. Moreover, the methods should allow an application to execute in different environments, each having different user interface hardware.